At a moment of dissolution in design, technique is all an architect can grasp. Techniques occupy a beautifully indeterminate void on the fault line between theory and practice. Spared of reductive allegiance to either, design techniques are uniquely powerful. A technique may disrupt, innovate, communicate, or surprise. At the same time, techniques stand as silent markers of membership—opaque envelops delimiting communities of colleagues. This symposium, the first event in the series “All that is solid…,” interrogates the motivations, instruments, influences, justifications, effects, and origins of contemporary design techniques. Ultimately technique is how novelty manifests itself in architecture, expanding and advancing the inner core of our discipline.